The Road Not Taken
by Aki1
Summary: Christmas Eve 2018: Near a breaking point, Suzaku believes the world would have been better off if he'd never been born. C.C. decides to show him exactly how that would have turned out. / based very loosely on "It's a Wonderful Life"; post-R2, one-shot


Disclaimer: _Code Geass_ – with its characters, settings, and all other borrowed elements here – is the sole property of its creators. The first few lines opening the story are taken from the last verse of _Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening_, by Robert Frost. Title is from yet another Frost poem: these things, I do not even dream of owning.

Author's Note: Although it was initially intended as such, I now hesitate to call this a Christmas fic, partly because it's late (sorry), and also because it has less to do with the actual holiday than you'd think. The premise was a suggestion / challenge from **Drakyndra** some time ago: merging _Code Geass_ and _It's a Wonderful Life_ (which, by the way, I _also_ don't own). And I really, really, just lifted the premise – main character wishes on Christmas Eve that he'd never been born; 'guardian angel' shows him what the world would have been like, if that were so – and nothing else. So, if you haven't watched the movie…don't worry, because to be honest, neither have I.

(EDIT: Fixed an epic typo involving Suzaku's birthyear, which I apparently made _twice_. Thanks to those who pointed it out!)

Warnings: This story is long, and rather dark. Some parts are heavily disjointed, and language may be inappropriate for the kiddies. Did I also mention this story is long?

Enjoy!

* * *

_The woods are lovely, dark, and deep  
But I have promises to keep  
And miles to go before I sleep  
And miles to go before I sleep_

**. : The Road Not Taken : . **

_24 December 2018 a.t.b._

Christmas Eve sees the streets of Pendragon still thronging with life, city bazaars and revellers a far cry from the strict curfews and mass arrests just months prior. Rebuilding the capital from ashes and memories took less than a year, give or take. It's an uncanny thing: either a miracle or a testament to the boundlessness of the human spirit, or perhaps a little bit of both. Regardless, people heal, and the world heals with them.

_(and all it took was the death of one man)_

The children finish their carols and wave goodbye now, set to move on to the next of these houses lining the perimeter of the Imperial Palace. This new one is less extravagant than the previous structure, which was something of a city in itself. But they don't see vestiges of the tragedy past, the names of the dead and the missing that used to be scrawled all over the scaffolding at the back. Neither do they see Zero sitting at the window on the second storey; stripped of his signature ensemble, purple (the color of royalty, perhaps the most potent irony yet) maybe it's not that they don't _see_ the boy in the button-up shirt and the denim, but that they don't recognize him.

This is fine, he thinks as he watches them walk away. The youngest survivors are the most resilient. One day, they will either recover or forget, if they haven't done so already.

"You know, we're almost out of coins." C.C. enters his room with very little regard for subtlety, leaving the door wide open. She throws herself onto his bed and toys idly with a lock of her hair; the rest of it is splayed out over his sheets, as though poured on. "Not that it matters to me either way, but we can't have you destitute now, can we?"

He doesn't look at her. "They didn't recognize you?"

"For the thousandth time, no." She heaves a sigh, long and loud and dramatic, and he can almost hear '…you _silly_ boy,' appended at the end of it. "I wouldn't be surprised if they've all forgotten about me. The only people who truly cared are gone now, and it's not as if any of my recent doings were as scandalous as his."

It's almost an unwritten rule at this point in time: they don't speak his name anymore. Though in their case, it isn't out of spite (_the Demon is dead, hallelujah!_) or some deep-seated tradition not to speak of those no longer with them, but something much simpler – that they don't have to.

"Or _yours_, come to think of it." There is the rustle of cloth, and he sees her rolling onto her stomach in his peripheral vision. "Do you think that's wise?"

"What?"

"Sitting there. For all the world to see. What if they recognize _you_?" When he doesn't reply, she merely shrugs and traces a spiral onto the silk. Her legs swing idly in the air. "Would you be so kind as to get me a pizza? It's almost Christmas, after all. We should celebrate."

Finally, he turns to face her. The interior of the room is somewhat darker than the creeping dusk outside, and there is a dull ache in his eyes wanting for light. "I didn't know you believed," he says, managing a small smile.

"I don't." She dismisses that with a sharp tone, haughty and blunt. "But he did. I figure it's as good enough a reason as any."

There is nothing to say to that, and he drops his gaze off to some faraway corner of the room. He tries not to dwell too much – on Ashford's elaborate Christmas festival with mock sleigh rides and hallways decked in mistletoe; on the gingerbread house he'd spent hours to help decorate, once he finally assured Lelouch that yes, he was competent and no, he would not let his cat devour it all; on memories of Lelouch decorating a _bonsai _plant he'd 'borrowed' from the main garden – '_Nunnally wanted a Christmas tree, so shut up!'_ he'd shouted indignantly then, which did nothing to quell Suzaku's laughter. Those are lighter recollections, of happier times. He wants to say he doesn't miss them, but the fact that the thought alone takes too much effort is telling.

"Oh for gods' sakes." C.C. finally sits up, and the buckles dangling from the sleeves of her straitjacket scrape the sheets. "Is this all you plan to do for the holidays? Sulk? If I'd known you were going to be this boring I wouldn't have bothered coming back."

"I didn't ask you to," he says automatically. It takes a while before he realizes how that came out. "Not that you aren't welcome, of course," he adds quickly, turning to her in earnest. "I appreciate the company."

"Smooth," she sneers. "A magnificent save." She pushes herself off the bed and saunters over to his spot on the window. Even with his legs stretched out, the ledge is just wide enough for her to squeeze herself into a seat between the edge and his feet. "What a sight you make, and in such a time of good cheer at that. I'm glad depression isn't contagious, but sometimes you make me wish it were."

Suzaku swallows. "I'm not." He looks back down at the street. Below them, the children and travelling carollers are nowhere to be found. "I'm sorry."

"I wasn't asking for an apology," she sniffs.

"Then what do you want?"

"Enlighten me, as to what I owe the pleasure of wallowing in all this gloom." He looks at her with a bland, questioning gaze, and C.C. rolls her eyes. "Curiosity, if you simply must have a reason."

Of course it is; it would be too much of a stretch to imagine he actually had her sympathy, but then again he realizes he can't imagine what he would do with it anyway, had she offered. Her unspoken question prompts many things to manifest in his mind – among them, the Empress' tears in the indoor garden, the sheer silence of the grand piano – _not this year_, he imagines it mourns, _and never again_. "Nunnally misses him."

"Projection."

"What?"

"No?" C.C. eyes him carefully, and probably recognizes his confusion, because she quickly waves a hand in front of her face and shakes her head. "Perhaps not, then. Go on."

Suzaku decides he doesn't want to linger on that, whatever it was. Still, it's not as though his alternative is much more pleasant: "They'd spent Christmas together every year since she was born. This was important to them. And…" He trails off. Surely he doesn't need to finish that sentence, not for her benefit at least.

That, and there is also something dangerous within him that makes his throat tighten.

"Yet she would be missing him a great deal less if she _hadn't _figured out what you two were up to. Honestly, sometimes ignorance really is bliss." Her eyes are sharp when she glances his way. "Turn off that look. If you feel so bad about it, then go to her. In her case, I'd imagine spending Christmas with her loyal Zero is better than nothing. And it would do you well to get out of this house for a change, _boya_."

The word dredges up something raw and painful. "Don't call me that," he snaps before he can help himself. But C.C. merely looks on impassively, waiting for him to continue. And he shuts his eyes and sighs in defeat because, really, they both know what this is about. "I won't be his replacement." Then he ducks his head and mumbles, "I can't."

There is a lull in the conversation, if this can even be called one. Perhaps it would be poetic if it began to snow at this point, or if something otherwise took place on the streets below – more carollers ringing the doorbell, or the beginning of the fireworks display – to justify that. But nothing of the sort happens, and all they are left with is this heavy, awkward limbo.

"I'm going to get pizza," she announces all of a sudden. Just like that. She pushes herself off the ledge and drops to the floor, and her heels click against the hardwood. She gathers her hair and twists it thrice around her hand, before letting it drop and cascade down the front of her shoulder. "I had better not come back to see you've thrown yourself out the window." There is a short pause after that, and before he knows it she's laughing at him. "I can't believe you!"

"What?"

"For a moment there, you looked like you were actually considering it." She clicks her tongue at him, and looks pointedly away. "Have you finally outdone yourself this time? Shall I give Lord Jeremiah a call?"

"You don't get to mock me." Suzaku swallows on a dry mouth; it provides very little relief. He doesn't want to think too much about all the things she just implied. "You wanted this, too. That was the only reason you made a contract with him, right? You still do."

"Mm, perhaps. Might I point out, though, that our motives are nothing alike?" That is as much affirmation as she's going to give. He ends up watching as she paces the room, rummaging for a coat that will cover the distinctive buckles and straps. She throws it on carelessly and tucks her hair into the back, a thoughtful gaze offered to the closet door. "You know it won't make a difference. Your death won't bring anyone back. Nor will it undo anything."

"I know. Then maybe…" He trains his gaze back outside. The thought is something like a primal suggestion, brewing from the back of his mind. He's not entirely sure where it came from, and it takes slowly, but steadily: the more he dwells on it, the more it seems to resolve itself. "Maybe I never should have…"

C.C. shoots him a long, meaningful look before he can finish. "Careful what you wish for," is all she says, before promptly turning around and nonchalantly transferring some bills from his wallet to her purse. A knitted hat hides the mark on her forehead. "I'm borrowing your sunglasses."

Suzaku lets her, and he doesn't watch her leave.

What did he contribute over his entire life, in the grand scheme of things? The death of his father, for one, and quite possibly the untimely collapse of his own country. Britannia's military would have been down one soldier, but what of it, then? He hates to think in terms of these absolutes, but if he weren't around to oppose Lelouch and the Black Knights, how many innocent people would _not _have wound up in the crossfire?

If Schneizel was planning his own Requiem in the end – with the Damocles, but _without_ the months of massacres beforehand, all held in the name of terror – then really, how would that have been different from what he and Lelouch accomplished? What, if anything, did the world ever gain from his entire existence?

(Nothing, then.)

He thinks of the FLEIJA he fired over Tokyo (oh _gods_), the soldiers and pilots who died with the Lancelot on their video screen as their last sight alive. The Japanese people he'd let down, time and time again, even after coming so tantalizingly close. And that, of course, leads to the open, festering wound of a memory to which all paths of his psyche still seem to converge: Euphy, her Special Administrative Zone – what a catastrophe that was, and how he caused her little else but pain. Had she never met him, would her life have been better for it?

Two years, almost, and his answer still hasn't changed.

And it seems, after much consideration, that the pattern is a consistent one. His thoughts flicker to the people whose lives he touched and ruined – Gino and Anya and Shirley and A.S.E.E.C., everyone who ever believed in him. Then: Lelouch, Nunnally –

"_Still_?" He glances up, and all of a sudden C.C. is back, his sunglasses pushed above her head to rest on the edge of her hat. She hefts a large pizza box onto his bed and walks to the window without opening it. "My god, you are pathetic."

Suzaku looks back outside, at the sky, and squints. It doesn't look any different. How long was she gone? "I'm sorry."

"Spare me. If you really were, you'd do something about it." She removes the hat and sunglasses and tosses them one at a time onto the bed as well. Here, with her face eclipsed in its own shadow, her hair shimmers in these last few rays of sunlight. "You're not going to, are you?"

"What?"

"Do anything about it." She doesn't even wait for him to reply. "Of course you're not. Seriously, this isn't nearly as funny anymore. I would have thought, after all that time you had to think, that you would have figured it out by now."

He swallows. "Figured out what?"

"How hopelessly _wrong_ you are." C.C. sidles up to him then, and she looks determined; there is a spark in her golden eyes, and that it makes it through the usual haze of impassiveness is somewhat remarkable. But she looks annoyed, as well, and she hesitates as she mutters under her breath: "For what it's worth, I'm not doing this only for your sake."

And then she leans forward and kisses him without warning.

There is neither passion nor malice in it, just the insistent press of her lips and hands reaching out to steady him against the ledge, tilt his head up. He feels his eyes widening in shock, which is a curious thing, because all of a sudden he's engulfed in darkness.

And despite the millions of thoughts racing through his head at this very moment, the most inexplicable one is peculiar, as though planted there by someone else: that for some reason, he knows that _this _is how Lelouch regained his memories, all those months ago.

* * *

_(2000: This is the first day of the rest of the summer, a glimpse of time that carries with it a mandate of no return, no looking back. The scorching July heat punishes the earth outside: this is all there is, and today, a woman clutches a bundle of blankets to her chest and weeps.)_

* * *

C.C. is gone.

Suzaku blinks back the shock and tries to make sense of what just happened. It's darker now, and when the very last of those sensations – the swipe of her thumb across his chin, the piquant, lingering scent of lavender – melt away, his eyes finally adjust.

And he sees corpses of soldiers at his feet.

It's not this that quickens his pulse (because what is another dozen dead to one who fired a FLEIJA, served the Demon Emperor?) but rather the fact that he _knows_ these soldiers – Clovis' Royal Guard, and he sees the captain grinning widely at something in the ceiling, a gaping hole still leaking blood and other things from the side of his head. He gags and looks away.

But they're _all_ like that, with open, glassy eyes and smiles frozen on their faces, against the gruesome spill of blood and bullets on the walls, on the floor.

He turns the unsteady wobble of his feet into a sprint at the last possible second. And then he is stumbling out of the tunnel, away from that _madness_, and the most unsettling thing is that he knows this place as well, and remembers exactly how to retrace his steps until he sees sunlight. But there is no dangle of cable from the entrance overhead (odd; he could have sworn it should be here somewhere).

He leaps onto the rubble and hoists himself up and out by his arms.

Outside, Shinjuku is a mess of craters and dust, gravel and smoke. Suzaku coughs and waves a hand in front of his face, trying to clear the air. He's aware now of not only where he is, but _when_ he is, and yet even with this knowledge something doesn't feel quite right. Surely if C.C. took the trouble to show him anything at all, it wouldn't be something he already knows. What is the point of this?

He hears landspinners in the distance, coming closer. Determined, he breaks into a sprint and heads in that direction. But the Knightmare, it turns out, is already coming his way. And there are two of them, actually: the leading one is a typical, unremarkable Sutherland, but the one in pursuit…

Suzaku sucks in his breath when he sees the Lancelot. The white and gold of its armor grant a familiar sight, as does the pair of MVS drawn and glowing a vibrant red, humming. But the machine is sluggish and inefficient, trailing somewhat behind the Sutherland with an erratic lag in its movements, and it's only now that he finally _gets _it.

_(Careful what you wish for.)_

"Wait!" He begins to run after the Sutherland, quickly realizes the futility of that and stops, waiting for the Lancelot instead. At the very moment it zooms by, a well-timed leap lands him right on the edge of its left landspinner. The rush of wind whips back his hair and makes his eyes smart. The metal shuddering beneath forces him to hang on to the leg for dear life.

All the while, he isn't thinking about how ludicrous this is, or how he actually has no idea what this will accomplish; the only thing running through his head is that _he _may not be the Lancelot's pilot, but _is that still Lelouch in the Sutherland? _and _what are the chances?_ He remembers his own single-minded resolve, when he was the one at the controls that day, and his only goal was to stop that Sutherland – because stopping it meant he'd stopped the fighting, and A.S.E.E.C. would be successful.

Ignorance really is bliss.

He knows for sure it's Lelouch when the Sutherland turns around and, aiming beneath its shoulder, shreds the middle section of the wall beside it with bullets. Slow and poorly-synched as this devicer might be, he's still fast enough to manoeuvre the Lancelot clear of the falling rubble's path. The sudden, sharp change in direction flings off the Knightmare's stowaway, and Suzaku tumbles head over heels onto the pavement. He gasps when he collides with the front of the crumbling building, and he's still reeling from it when he finally staggers to his feet.

He hears the screaming then, loud and clear against the shattering glass and crack of concrete. He looks up and sees (and _remembers_) that Eleven woman and her child, falling from so high up that he recalls having to match their speed when it was _him _in that machine. With a sickening dread his eyes dart back to the Lancelot – _come back_, he wants to say, but his throat locks – because he knows the motion sensors would have picked it up seconds ago, and surely the pilot is aware of it by now and _dear gods, please come back – _

The woman's scream is cut short by another, louder sound. In that instant, just before the silence overtakes him, Suzaku feels waves of something warm and wet drenching his jeans, his sneakers, splotches of it reaching as high as his face. His mind stalls.

Only when the drone of the Knightmares' landspinners die away completely does he recover. The horror is merely an afterthought, and his gaze slides down slowly, despite his best efforts, as though possessed by something morbid.

When it (_all _of it) finally sinks in, he screams.

* * *

He's on a mountain now, standing precariously several feet away from the edge of a precipice. Suzaku steps back, slowly. Scanning the valley below, he realizes a part of him recognizes the iron and smoke from the industrial plants, the houses clustered in grids around them. But the synapses in his brain don't quite make the connection yet.

What they process instead: the prickle at the back of his neck. When he turns around he finds that he is facing East, but the sun is already halfway up in the sky – high enough to illuminate the rest of the mountain, and the girl standing about fifty meters away, eyeing him impassively.

"C.C." The name leaves his lips in a whisper, nowhere near loud enough for her to hear. But then just like that, she cocks her head and spins around, leaving without so much as a backward glance.

"Hey!" Suzaku grits his teeth and scrambles after her, stirring up the dust in his wake.

The rocky slope provides little challenge to him, but the witch proves frustratingly elusive. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised, though; C.C. is the type of person who can disappear at a whim (an enviable thing, sometimes). He probably isn't going to find her unless she _lets_ him, but if she was going to play that game from the start then what was the point of showing herself to him in the first place?

Then there is the matter of _this_, this dream (or not?) – _what did she do to him_?

The breeze is cold, and he wipes the blood off his face with the back of his hand.

He surmounts some final length of incline, steeper than the rest, to find himself at the threshold of a safe-house, well-hidden among the foliage and rocks. The door is ajar, and he throws it open without thinking twice. He takes three steps inside, searching for her, for that tell-tale straitjacket or even a glimpse of green hair. Instead, he only sees two Japanese soldiers at a table in the center of the room, playing a board game.

They don't even look up at him, despite all the noise he just made. And C.C. is nowhere to be found. Suzaku pauses mid-stride, confused. _What?_

He's not sure which comes first, which comes next, or if all of these happen at more or less the same time: somehow he places the men's uniforms – and this, in turn, tells him _where_ he is – when he hears a loud click that sends a dead weight plummeting down his stomach. "Stop right there."

Suzaku freezes as he's told, but he looks past the barrel of the pistol hovering near the side of his head. This is the first time, since Requiem, that he sees the purple, gold and red of Zero's costume on someone else, the hard metal and reflective sheen off the front of the mask. And he doesn't realize the sheer stupidity until later on, when he has already blurted out the word: "Lelouch?"

"…What did you just say?" the man hisses through the mask, a menacing whisper the voice-changer doesn't have to hide. Zero (_Lelouch_, his mind insists stubbornly; the knowledge is a burden now) betrays himself for a split-second with surprise leaking into his posture, but then just as quickly that moment is over, and the barrel of the gun is rammed into his temple. "_Don't_ move! Who sent you?"

"No-one!" he cries. "Lelouch, don't you – ?"

He stops himself before he can voice out the next word, because he _recognizes_ that it's pointless. If C.C. made it so that he never existed in this world, then of course, Lelouch will have no idea who he is.

_And…_

Even in this world, he's the faster one of them – that much, naturally, hasn't changed. He spots the slightest jerk of Lelouch's trigger finger and ducks, lunging forward as the gunshot sends a bullet into the wall. He grabs a wrist and manages to wrestle the gun away in three seconds flat.

It's when he clicks on the safety that the tiny panel on the left side of the mask slides away, revealing a narrowed, blood-red eye: "Die!"

Oh, the irony.

He waits for the Geass to slam into him, something like a palpable wave. It does, and yet what he feels is the burn of the old one, stewing behind his eyes: _curse me once, never again._ "Can't," he says aloud, staring straight into that eye and seeing the sigil – it's hard to spot, but it's definitely there. "Sorry."

"What in the name of…?" The panel slides shut immediately, but not before Suzaku catches sight of the iris shifting back to a more neutral, violet hue. He lets the man go, and Lelouch backs away slowly, rubbing at his wrist.

The silence that follows is a long one, before he cocks his head to the center of the room.

"Something you'd like to explain, witch?" he finally calls out.

"Hardly." There, next to the table at which the two JLF soldiers still sit oblivious to all the chaos, C.C. stands against a post with her arms crossed. "I've never seen this boy before in my life."

"What? But I – !"

"He seems," Lelouch cuts in tersely, "to be immune to my Geass."

"Oh? An anomaly, for sure." She looks at him, and her eyes sweep over the bloodstains on his clothes. "Or not, given how wantonly you seem to play that card nowadays. For all you know, you've already used it on him."

A low growl emanates from the depths of Zero's mask. "Then it's truly inconvenient, that limitation."

C.C. merely shrugs, studying her nails. "It was bound to happen sooner or later."

He's about to open his mouth and protest (_everything_) but a movement from Lelouch catches his eye. As Zero, he steps back and stands to his full height, chin raised high. He pushes his cape behind him. It's a stance meant to intimidate, he recognizes, but he feels as though if he didn't know better, he'd forget that _he _is the one currently holding the gun. "Who are you? And what is your business here?"

He decides to ignore that first question. "The operation, today…" He glances out the single window and sees snow beginning to fall; outside: the slope of the mountain, and a foggy glimpse of the valley below. Narita. "That's why you're here, isn't it? You're going to start a landslide."

To his credit, Lelouch does not look the slightest bit perturbed by the accusation. But he doesn't deny it either. "I should have known better than to send out those plans to my men a day in advance." He lets out a short, haughty chuckle, before carefully extending an arm and opening his hand. "I want the name of the person who gave you that information, as well as whatever source you have for…for that name you keep calling me."

"Cleaning house?" C.C. cuts in wryly.

"Searching for weak links, is more like it. Future operations will have no tolerance for this kind of carelessness." He looks at Suzaku the entire time, then tries to coax an answer by waving his hand impatiently. "Was it Tamaki?"

"Who?" Suzaku tries to place the name for a few seconds, before quickly shaking his head. "It doesn't matter! That valley down below, there are hundreds of people there! You can't just – "

"We've taken those people into consideration. And however it was you were going to finish that sentence matters not, because I assure you we _can_." Lelouch lowers his arm and turns away from him now, walking to the table. He picks up a small day-planner on the way there, and then nonchalantly pulls up the last empty chair. The two soldiers don't even look up at him (what _is_ that about?) "Evacuation will begin in half an hour. We will save as many as we can."

Suzaku glowers. "And what about everyone else?"

"An unfortunate loss of life, but perhaps a necessary price." If Lelouch notices his agitation, he does not show it. "After three long years of occupation, Japan is thirsty for first blood; today, one way or another, she will have it."

He lets that sink in, slowly. The argument is a familiar one, it's true – for the goal to be reached, collateral damage, while minimized, is otherwise to be damned. But he can only imagine the Demon Emperor making this claim and _meaning _it, no-one else. Surely Lelouch wasn't this unforgiving this early into his campaign as Zero? He can't help but feel as though he's missing something here; hell, _everything _seems odd, with this C.C. claiming not to know him (where is the one who _does_, then?) and the men at the table still ignoring them completely. And most of all: "…Wait, _three years?_"

Lelouch checks the time on a clock hanging from the wall. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to take my leave. This conversation, while decidedly _un_enlightening, has been rather amusing." He stands up, looks at Suzaku for a brief moment, then snaps his day-planner shut. "Goodbye."

He feels the cold barrel of a gun poking into his side. And then he understands, if only a bit (why Lelouch so offhandedly mentioned Geass, and his battle plans). He turns and sees a shock of pink hair, icy blue eyes, and those are the last things he sees before the Geass takes over.

Shit –

(_Bang!_)

* * *

The afternoon sunlight is like a balm spread across his skin, rejuvenating even after being filtered through glass. Outside the large picture window, he sees sky (clear, inviting) and the branches of an orange tree almost grazing the pane, not yet weighted down by its own blossoms. They sway in a breeze he can't feel, a hypnotizing sight. Suzaku stares at the flowers and inhales, but instead of their fragrant aroma he breathes instead the smell of vanilla, and of something warm and heady seeped into the furniture. This is fine.

"Hello?"

His eyes refocus, and he stares straight at the glass. Oddly, his clothes are pristine, and he's no longer covered in blood, but this gives him no relief. Neither does the sight of her reflected here as well: sitting at the head of the table, the armchair placed carefully off to the side to accommodate her wheelchair, she has lifted her head and paused in the middle of her _origami,_ waiting intently.

"Is anyone there?" Nunnally cocks an ear for a second, before turning to face him perfectly. "Miss Sayoko?"

"No, I…" Only now does he realize how he probably would have been better off making a silent escape, and he feels like kicking himself. Maybe that was never an option, though. "She's not here. I'm sorry."

"Oh. Hello." Nunnally frowns for a bit, confused. "May I ask why you're here?"

Suzaku turns around and smiles. His most recent memories of Nunnally involve fierce political debates and her own gruelling schedule – _up at five, bed no earlier than ten_ – as Empress. She can handle it, he knows, and more than once she has surprised him with her sheer tenacity. But still, it's nice to see her like this again, young and at leisure, completely focused on whimsical things like folding birds out of paper. "But I'm not entirely sure myself." It's the truth, too. _Damn it, C.C. _"I apologize for intruding. I'll be on my way."

"Wait." Just her voice stops him in his tracks, already on the way to the door, and when she resumes speaking it is in a much more pleasant tone. "Do you mind…that is, would you like to stay for a while?"

He doesn't ask anymore. Perhaps she's lonely, or perhaps she's really just _this_ kind, but he pulls up the chair next to her and sits down. On the table, a stack of those pre-cut, square pieces of paper in different colors sits neatly, compared to the many finished products just scattered around. She's making cranes, it seems. It's probably assuming too much, but she has a long way to go for a thousand, and he has nothing to do with his hands anyway, so he decides to help.

"I'm actually looking for someone," he comments, when Nunnally asks again. "She has long hair, eats a lot of pizza." That doesn't seem to be doing anything for her. "Calls herself C.C.?"

"Oh, her!" The girl lights up as she recognizes the name, which also surprises him; how and _when _did Nunnally come to know of C.C.? "No, I'm afraid I haven't spoken with her recently, although she does come here sometimes. She's a friend of my brother's."

"You don't say…" He trails off, wondering if Lelouch is home. There is no calendar in the room, so he has no idea what day it is. The other boy's absences never seemed to follow a schedule of their own, as though he just simply cut class when he felt like it, but now that he knows Lelouch was probably using those times to lead the Black Knights…

"What did you say your name was?" she asks sweetly.

He didn't say anything of the sort, he realizes. He looks at her earnest, innocent expression and finds that he just can't lie to her even if he wanted to. "Suzaku."

"Oh." There is a thoughtful pause after that, and he finds himself waiting for the inevitable – _Eleven_, maybe, or something similar. But it never comes, and it's comforting because at least this tells him that she really _is_ this kind. "That's a nice name."

"Really?"

She nods, repeats it softly, says it a couple more times. "Am I saying it right?"

"That's perfect."

"I'm glad." And then she smiles, finishing the crane in her hands and reaching out for another to work on. "My name is Nunnally."

Her hand stills in mid-air, which is when he realizes she wasn't actually reaching for more paper at all. He takes her hand in his and squeezes gently, watching her face for any kind of reaction. "It's nice to meet you." He doesn't get any, apart from the widening of her smile and the slightest tilt of her head.

(He remembers how _he_ met Nunnally – a desperate, blind little girl pleading with him to spare her brother after he'd felled Lelouch to the ground. He ran away, that day, not wanting to believe he'd hurt someone so powerless, so fragile. He wishes he'd met like this instead, no tears and shame.)

"You're not from here, are you?" she asks him as soon as he lets go.

Suzaku resists asking the obvious question, instead letting out a small laugh as he resumes working on his crane. "I think I used to be," he answers. "Long ago. I'm not too sure now."

"What happened?"

How is he going to explain this? _'I don't know'_ just seems like too easy of a way out. "I can't remember."

Nunnally looks sympathetic. "You have amnesia?"

"Not really." He folds back a wing, pressing down on the crease with his nail. "I remember things, but…" He works on the other wing and frowns, thinking of Anya. Is Marianne dead in this world, and if so did she choose Anya again? Neither of those seems to be an event his existence would have altered. But at the same time, neither is a question he can ask, to know for sure. "I don't think they're correct."

She seems deep in thought for a while before, finally, she reaches for a sheet of paper.

He learns of this country's history then. In a soft voice, light but no less reverent, she tells him: how they used to call it _Japan_, but now, Area 11; how it was August when Britannian forces swept in and began a struggle that would last for years. Genbu Kururugi, the country's popular and beloved Prime Minister, called for do-or-die resistance, and it was do-or-die resistance that his countrymen pledged and gave gladly. The Chinese Federation, seeing an opportunity to claim a good portion of the country's resources for itself, attacked from the Northwest a year later, prompting the E.U. to cry foul. Only with the Prime Minister's capture did Britannia finally wrest control of the embattled island nation, driving her rivals out with an influx of newer-generation Knightmares. But that would take four years more.

Nunnally speaks of all this with the slightest hint of sadness. Hers is not the bland tone of a typical middle school Britannian student rattling off facts and figures from a textbook, but something decidedly more involved. He wants to ask her many things: she and her brother, why were they sent to Japan? (He doesn't ask _this_, though, because a gut feeling tells him the answer will be the same as it's always been.) The Prime Minister and his household, Kirihara, Kaguya – how were they? Were they good people, and did they treat their guests well?

And the Prime Minister's wife…well, what about her? Suzaku never met his mother. It's strange to think his only chance might be here, and he'd have to introduce himself as the son she never had. Somewhere, somewhere, he's fairly certain C.C. must be laughing at him, right about now.

Suzaku finally finishes his crane and places it among the others Nunnally had finished. It's only slightly better, and that's saying a lot, considering many things – the fact that he was forced to study this art form, much to his chagrin and Kaguya's delight, long ago, and Nunnally is… "You're very good at this."

"Oh, thank you." She beams. "Our helper, Miss Sayoko, taught me." She turns her head ever so slightly and cocks an ear again, as though listening for something – footsteps? "I think that's her right now."

"Hmm?"

But as the door slides open and he turns to look, it _isn't_ Sayoko standing there, with a teapot and platters of cakes on a cart, a warm smile as he was wont to see whenever he visited the clubhouse. No, it is someone whose footfalls are heavier, a tall man with white hair and a broad, sinister grin. A visor hides his eyes completely, and as the door beeps shut behind him he begins to clap his hands and laugh.

It takes a few seconds to place his features and remember – _the madman, the rope and the duct tape and the taunting phone calls to Lelouch's cell phone, the photo of his hostage circled with folded paper cranes _– but Suzaku is on his feet the moment he does. The chair topples over in his haste. "You!"

"Oh? Someone else?" Mao stops clapping and stands up straight, lowering his visor and staring straight into his eyes – and Suzaku lets him probe his mind. "Wait a minute, you're…" All traces of flippancy gone from his voice and features, Mao backpedals in horror. "You're not supposed to be here!"

"Neither are you," Suzaku growls. He knows what this man is here for. Stepping squarely between the doorway and the wheelchair, he shields Nunnally with his body and wishes he had a weapon. "Get out!"

"Suzaku?" He can hear the anxiety in Nunnally's voice, but he doesn't have the luxury of feeling guilty about that. She reaches out and clasps his hand, and he allows this too. "Who is that?"

"No-one." He looks at Mao, who looks as though he's still having a hard time comprehending the situation. He remembers the pendulum bomb, the horrible feeling that had crept into his veins as he jumped down with the pocketknife drawn, imagining the many ways he could miss the wire and cut another, or otherwise disturb the bomb and wipe out those sewers. He feels sick. "Turn around and walk away," he warns. "Do it!"

By this time the man finally snaps, and whips out a pistol from inside his coat with remarkable ease. "You goddamned father-killer – !"

Suzaku leaps over the table and tackles him to the floor (because Lelouch's Geass isn't the only thing that won't work on him twice.)

He manages to disengage the ammunition clip all while Mao is struggling underneath him, but when he tries to take out his phone he sees the glint of a knife. He leaps back, ends up overestimating Mao's reach and feels the small of his back colliding with the edge of the table. He hisses in pain and kicks the knife out of Mao's hand. He tosses the clip against the panel on the wall, activating the automatic door, then uses the momentum to launch into a more powerful, spinning kick that sends the man hurtling through the doorway.

"Suzaku!" He hears the frantic whirr of the wheelchair, and then the girl is beside him, clearly shaken but stubbornly putting on a brave face. "Are you all right?"

"Nunnally," he rasps out. Glancing around the room, he spots only the one exit, aside from the window – but they're three floors up, if he recalls correctly, and hopefully Mao won't try anything that foolish.

He finally flips out his phone, but stills when he sees the display: otherwise blank, the name of the carrier is missing, and the labels for the date and time are occupied by curious, filled-box characters. _What_ the hell is going on?

Biting back a snarl he searches the room for a landline, finds one, and pulls the phone as close to Nunnally as possible, and as far as the cord will allow. "Call the Knight-police," he instructs, placing the receiver in her hand and dialling the number quickly for her. He gives her Mao's description as he pries the knife out of the wall. "After I leave, lock the door and don't let anyone inside."

"Where are you going?"

He doesn't have time to answer her, already out the door with the gun re-assembled and tucked into the back of his jeans. Gripping the knife, he waits to hear the sound of the door locking from the inside, before sprinting into the hallway. Mao is nowhere in sight. He glances all around, suddenly feeling a nagging weight in his stomach: did he wait too long?

His phone buzzes, which is an odd thing because when he brings the device out of his pocket he sees that he apparently still doesn't have any reception. Regardless, there's a message flashing insistently from an unknown number, and when he opens it there's only one word: _**rooftop**_.

Suzaku hightails it at that and doesn't bother to reply. He finds the stairwell and is bursting through the door to the roof in less than twenty seconds, and that's enough time for him to worry about the details: if this is going to deteriorate into a fight, he likes to think he has the upper hand. (But can Mao move as fast as he can think? With Lelouch back then it was a different story, but now…)

He blinks back the sunlight, takes one look at the scene waiting for him, and stops.

(…Now, apparently, none of that even matters.)

"Took you long enough." C.C., dressed inexplicably as a diplomat of some sort, is standing with her back to the railing. One hand is empty, fingers splayed across her hip; in the other, she holds a pistol with a silencer affixed to the end, which probably explains _Mao_, sprawled facedown and motionless at her feet. "Several months without a war slowed you down much?"

Suzaku lowers the arm holding the knife and narrows his eyes. "You _do_ know who I am."

"Of course." She squints at him, and then looks away. "How insulting."

He shakes his head, pretends he doesn't see the pool of blood slowly expanding from underneath Mao's neck. This doesn't make sense, either. "Why did you lie back at Narita?"

"Because it was easier. Did you really want Lelouch to start asking _questions_? We'd have never heard the end of it. And besides, that wasn't the point, which then brings me to _my_ point." She turns back to him with a scowl, and as she walks forward she points a finger accusingly. "_You_," she begins, and the way she jabs her finger into his chest is telling of her annoyance, "are doing this all wrong."

"W-what?"

"What _is _it with you and your stupidity? It's amazing you were able to last so long in the Britannian military, what with your penchant for _not_ following instructions."

"_Instructions_?" he echoes incredulously. By this time he realizes she has him backed against the opposite railing, and when she tries to prod him again he grabs her wrist. Enough. "You dragged me into this without so much as a warning! What did you _think_ I would do?"

"You wanted to know what the world would be like if you'd never been born, yes? Because you were so convinced it would be a better, happier place. Don't deny it," she adds quickly. "You want to see it so badly, fine, I can show it to you. But you're only supposed to _watch_. Because if you keep changing things while you're here, then there's no point to this now, is there?"

He waits for everything she's just said to sink in, and when it does he drops her arm. "Wait, are you saying…" He tries not to, but despite all his efforts he ends up thinking about _that_ day, when Lelouch had tried to go about it alone until he intervened, when Lelouch wouldn't have gotten within ten feet of that bomb, when there had been a machine gun mounted in front of the elevator and apparently, somewhere, a deal that involved Lelouch never calling the police. "Are you saying Nunnally was supposed to die today?"

C.C. doesn't look at him. "If that is the conclusion you've arrived at."

He looks at Mao's corpse again, several meters away. The puddle of blood is wider than the man's own height now, and his hands have lost all color. Suzaku tears his eyes away and swivels around, trying to focus on the sky, the ground below, _anything else_. The view makes him dizzy; he tries to take a deep breath but finds that he can't.

"I want out," he murmurs, clutching at the railing.

"Absolutely not," C.C. tells him crisply. "Not until you've actually _learned_ something."

"Then tell me what I need to know." He squeezes his eyes shut, blocking out the light. But the image dancing behind his eyelids is far from a pleasant one, so he opens them again. They smart. He wonders what she's going to show him next, and all of a sudden, again, he feels sick. "I don't want this anymore."

She doesn`t speak for a long while. And when she does – "That's not how this works" – her voice is much softer now, without the harsh edge it possessed just seconds ago. She places a hand on his shoulder, and it's somewhat comforting until she slides her fingers across his nape and finds the pressure point on his neck.

"I'm sorry."

She catches him before his head can crash into brass, or concrete, and the last thought in his head is bizarre – how thoughtful it is, given both their screwed-up standards, that she didn't just push him over the railing.

* * *

It begins with a collective echo, of hushed voices slowly becoming louder and louder.

The volume tapers off quickly, though, despite the press of people all around. Straining his neck for a better look, Suzaku finds himself in the middle of a crowd tens of thousands strong, but even with this immense number all the noise is subdued. It's a courtesy, he realizes, to the speaker on stage, who has just had to repeat her announcement:

"All of you who are called Japanese…may I please request all of you to die?"

A confused murmur spreads throughout the people, but Suzaku feels as though someone just knocked the wind out of him. "No," he whispers in disbelief. "No, this is _not_ fair."

He's squeezing his way out of the stadium long before the first gunshot, the first scream. And then he gets caught in the ensuing stampede anyway, and the crowd threatens to crush him from all sides. The screaming isn't quite loud enough to drown out the next order: for all Britannian troops to mobilize and kill any and all Elevens on sight. (_Because Euphemia li Britannia commands it!_)

Suzaku swears as he finally crosses the gate, among too many terrified civilians fleeing the stadium. He's not allowed to change anything. He's not allowed to _change _anything. He's not –

For all the progress he's made in controlling it, Lelouch's Geass still proves frustrating sometimes. It helps him to outrun the bullets from the Knight-police's assault rifles, duck under a well-aimed lance, dodge the shrapnel from a chaos mine that lands not ten meters away. It doesn't really help much, however, when he tries to push people out of the line of fire, or pull them back when they're going the wrong way (into the military's defense line). He's on his own when he rounds up a group of crying, cowering children, covering their escape, leading them to a hiding place beneath a toppled support beam.

"Are you with the Black Knights?" one of them asks.

"No," he says, and decides to leave it at that. "Stay here."

Suzaku runs into the streets, and it's madness. In his peripheral vision, civilians are gutted by Gloucesters, and blood paints the stadium walls. "What the _hell_, C.C.!" he shouts angrily, although she is nowhere to be seen. He forces himself to keep running, and tries desperately to find the Gawain; she should be there, he tells himself over and over, and then he's going to find her and _make_ her take him out of this nightmare, because surely there's no point to reliving _this_, especially when she made him promise –

He spots the Gawain. But at the same time, just several paces away, he sees Euphemia, clutching an assault rifle with her dress in bloody rags.

Zero was walking away from her but he's stopped now, and he recognizes the altered voice as the masked man turns around: "Yes, I would have liked to accomplish that – "

_(don't interfere don't interfere don't interfere)_

" – with you."

He's pushing Euphy out of the path of Zero's gunshot before he can even think (to _hell_ with it all), and he accepts his defeat as they roll clumsily over the street.

(_if he's not in the Lancelot, then next is – _)

He barely pulls them both away from what would have been a direct hit from the Hadron Cannons. The blast, however, melts the concrete where they just were, as well as the supports beneath, and so the next thing he knows, the road is caving in and they are tumbling underground.

They land among chunks of falling rubble and smoke, Suzaku on his back with a strangled cry, breaking Euphy's fall. She lost her assault rifle in the confusion, and when she struggles to a sitting position she looks terribly lost, as though she isn't sure what's going on.

"Oh my, are you still alive?" It's so strange to hear those words coming from her when her voice is so sweet, melodious by nature and echoing in these narrow tunnels, and especially when her next words – "That's unfortunate" – are just as saccharine.

She stumbles to her feet and crouches low with a hand braced against the wall, picking up the stray ammunition clip, trying to find the rest of her rifle. The Geass flares insistently behind his eyes, but he's dazed from the fall, and it hurts too much to move.

There's a treacherous part of him that aches at just seeing her like this: Euphemia li Britannia, Third Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire, trying to assemble a rifle in the dark, under the streets of Tokyo when a massacre is happening overhead. He looks up at the hole they fell through, seeing only empty sky. He doesn't see the Lancelot, or any other Knightmare in pursuit, which is strange. Where is her knight?

"I never chose one." Her voice startles him, and it is only then that he realizes he's voiced that thought aloud. "You see, my sister had a knight. Lord Guilford. He was the best a princess could ask for, very skilled, very good at what he did. He was so loyal to her." Euphy smiles, a haunting sadness in her _(red, they're rimmed red_) eyes. "But even he couldn't protect her."

Getting up is an unbelievable, painful struggle, but Suzaku finds it harder to come up with a reply once the words sink into his mind. "Princess Cornelia died?" he forces through gritted teeth.

"In Narita," she confirms.

Suzaku shakes his head. If she'd gone through something as terrible as that, then... "Then why did you create the Special Administrative Zone?"

Euphy is still smiling, but her features brighten as she steps closer, into the path of light trickling from above. "I don't want to lose anyone dear to me anymore. This way, Lelouch and Nunnally and I can be together! And the Japanese…" She stops talking, blinks rapidly. She shuts her mouth, furrows her brows and tries to recover her train of thought. "The Japanese…you're Japanese, too."

He staggers to his feet, the Geass by now fully active and forcing him to _move_ despite the pain. "Euphy," he begins, a warning. "Don't do this. Don't – "

"Ah." An ominous click resounds in the tunnel, and she's finally figured out how to put the pieces back together. "There we go."

Suzaku runs, blindly as the assault rifle sends a spray of bullets into the wall behind him. Euphy keeps her aim with dogged persistence, but she's just not trained for this; she's holding the weapon wrong, not enough grip to support the underside, and this allows him to wrest the rifle out of her grasp in a split second. He smashes it against the wall with all the strength he can muster and hopes, as little pieces of metal and plastic go flying past, that he didn't break his arm.

And then she's grabbing him from behind and pushing, and his head is filled with the scent of blood and roses. He loses his balance and slips, shifting his weight at the last possible moment – it's not enough, though, because soon he's lying on the ground with one arm twisted between his back and the floor.

The other is pinned under a pale, bloodstained knee as Euphy straddles him, all traces of a smile gone from her features.

"I'm sorry," she says as she wraps her hands around his neck. "I don't have anything against you. But I have to kill all the Japanese."

"Euphy." He chokes on the word, from those delicate, dainty fingers so intent on crushing his windpipe. "Please. You don't…have to do this. It doesn't have to…be…" His vision begins to darken, and his arm jerks. He knows what the Geass wants him to do, will _force_ him to do. So it's probably useless, in a way, that he's still talking – that, and he isn't sure which of them he's trying to convince in the first place.

He's not the only one surprised when something wet drips onto his cheeks…from above. "I'm…I'm crying," she stutters. Through the Geass, her eyes mirror his own, and show a heartbreaking innocence; she is so confused. "Why am I crying?"

"I loved you," Suzaku whispers, eyes sliding shut. Because he doesn't need to see her anymore, not when the Geass is taking over, not when he's already freed his arm and the weapon that's still there – Mao's gun – and brought it up. He clicks the safety catch off. "So much."

He aims a little higher than Lelouch had. At least this way, she doesn't suffer.

* * *

_("I warned you, didn't I? I told you not to change anything." He hears C.C., oddly, a murmur carried to him by the wind. And although he doesn't dare open his eyes, he senses her close to him, somehow. "Because sometimes, even your best efforts are all for naught.")_

* * *

"Clementine?"

Suzaku stays hunched over the table, ignoring the prickle from having his eyes pressed against the cradle of his arms. He doesn't want to see anything, not yet, but the voice coaxes him out of it anyway; apparently, this ordeal _isn't_ over.

He finally raises his head, and the first thing he sees is a stack of them, piled in a bowl just inches from his face: small, round fruits that fit snugly in his hand, always too bright to _not_ stand out against the background. That winter, the only one he'd spent at Ashford, Rivalz would bring a crate of them to the Student Council Room (_"Don't worry! There's way too many where those came from!"_) every week, until Arthur had his own veritable kingdom of crates and old newspaper. He'd take some to A.S.E.E.C. himself, after school. Lloyd ate them while working, getting juice all over his equipment, while Cecile insisted on keeping the peel because apparently, they made her car's interior smell divine.

So he remembers these fruits – 'Christmas oranges,' Rivalz called them. It makes sense, given the ice crusted outside the window, and the festive decorations inside the room.

"Clementine?" he is asked again, in that same sweet voice.

"Yes, thank you." He takes the fruit that is being offered to him, smooth and slightly warmed from her grasp. "Sorry."

"That's all right." Nunnally smiles at him kindly, and it perturbs the corners of her already-closed eyes. Her hair is longer than it was the last time he saw her, and although her face hasn't changed much at all, there is something about her aura that makes her seem older now, more aware. It's hard to pin down. "It's been a long time, Suzaku."

"Yeah." He wishes he knew exactly _how_ long. "You look well."

"Thank you." They both know she can't see, but she turns to him anyway, and her gaze would have been focused on his hands as he presses his thumb into the bottom and begins peeling it there. "To be honest, when Miss Sayoko told me I had a visitor here, I didn't expect it would be you."

"Ah." He peels the fruit quickly, and some of the mist gets in his eyes. It clears his head, a little. "Sorry, were you…were you waiting long?"

Nunnally giggles. "It's fine. You seemed very tired." She waits for him to finish his task, and when he splits the clementine into wedges and offers her half, she accepts gratefully. "Are you still having memory problems?"

"A bit." Suzaku bites his lip and tries not to think about how tactless he must have seemed, earlier. "What, ah…what year is it?"

It's still 2017, she tells him, although a lot has changed in the past few months. In the rebellion that followed after the massacre at Fuji, Japan was liberated, and Genbu Kururugi reinstated as Prime Minister. During the thirty-day pull-out of Britannian forces, there was apparently much raucous celebration on the streets of Tokyo, although she only heard about it from news programs and hearsay: "I haven't been outside the campus for some time," she admits. "Brother says it's not yet safe to go out into the city."

"What happened to the Britannians living in the Settlement?"

"Most of them went back to the homeland." Nunnally chews on a wedge thoughtfully. She doesn't see that Suzaku hasn't even started on his, already busy peeling another. "Those who stayed had to trade in their passports, but otherwise there weren't too many problems with that."

"You don't sound too happy about it." He thinks of Lloyd and Cecile and the rest of the staff at A.S.E.E.C., Shirley and Millay and everyone else. He wonders how they're faring, where they are. "You didn't want to stay here?"

Nunnally smiles again, but there's a sadness to it, and a hint of melancholy in her voice. "I'll be happy staying wherever my brother goes," she says quietly. "It doesn't matter where. But lately, it seems…" She trails off. He watches her carefully, waiting for any sign that he has to apologize for causing her distress, but it never shows. Smile brightening, she pops a wedge into her mouth and shakes her head before motioning to the door. "Nothing. That must be him now."

Suzaku never heard the footsteps, and by the time he realizes he should probably make an exit, the door has already slid open.

Lelouch doesn't look surprised to see him at all. They shake hands when Nunnally introduces them, though, and his grip is firm and warm as they pretend they've never seen one another before. He joins them for clementines and small talk – the uncharacteristically mild weather, how they won't have a white Christmas this year – and it is Nunnally he speaks to, most of the time. He treats Suzaku civilly enough, though, so that when Sayoko comes in and wheels Nunnally off to bed, the tension in the air from them having both been left alone is only slightly awkward.

And then Lelouch stands up, polishes off the rest of his fruit and nods in his general direction. "Walk with me."

It isn't a request so much as an order, but Suzaku gets up anyway and follows him out the door.

The club house is very different at night, with no school bells and P.A. announcements and chattering students loitering in its hallways. He knows about this – he stayed overnight more than once in the other world, after all – but there's something about this silence, this dimness now that unnerves him.

"I never imagined I would ever see you again. All things considered, your existence is a liability to me. Every person who possessed any knowledge of Zero's identity has either sworn to silence, or…well. You know how it is." Lelouch speaks of this so matter-of-factly, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his voice clear. "But I won't overlook the fact that you saved my sister, earlier this year. That is a debt I cannot repay."

Suzaku doesn't look at him. "I won't tell anyone. If that makes you feel better."

"It does, slightly."

Perhaps that's an accomplishment. He mimics the other boy's posture and stares at the floor, which does little to muffle their footfalls. Earlier a part of him thought it would be difficult to keep this Lelouch and _his _Lelouch separate in his mind, and that maybe this would cause problems. Now, though, he's not having any trouble with that at all, and this unsettles him too: so familiar (_same eyes; same voice_) and yet so different, this Lelouch is a complete stranger to him. "How did you know it was me?"

"C.C. told me about you, that night."

Suzaku barely remembers to keep walking. "What did she say?" he asks, very carefully.

"Only that the boy who chased away Nunnally's attacker was the same as the one from Narita." Lelouch eyes him critically, although there's a smile on his face. "Should she have said anything else?"

He shakes his head. "No. That…sounds about right."

"Why did you do it?" They descend the steps of the grand staircase that leads to the main lobby, Suzaku keeping a precise three steps behind. "Did you know he was coming?"

"No."

"But you knew what he came for."

He swallows hard as they reach the landing. This isn't a conversation he wants to have. "It wasn't all that hard."

Lelouch smiles and nods, seeming satisfied with that answer. He does not press the subject further.

They enter the study, and he offers Suzaku some of the sparkling cider above the fireplace there – "_To Christmas_," he says, "_and a new year that will finally be better than the last._" Suzaku returns the toast and adds nothing else, drinking quietly. He wonders why the other boy is being so kind to him; he saved Nunnally _once_, was that enough? But he remembers just how muchLelouch loves his sister, and cracks a smile. That, apparently, hasn't changed either.

He stares at the liquid in his glass, if only because the flames are too bright and the windows are all shuttered, and there is nothing else to look at.

"So what now?" He supposes it's late enough, and they are out of earshot anyway, to talk about this. "Japan is free. You've accomplished your goal. Everyone seems to be at peace."

"You almost sound resentful." Lelouch chuckles darkly, refilling his glass. "Regardless, the work is far from over. The Black Rebellion spurred a series of movements and revolutions across the Pacific. At least in part, I should be responsible for ensuring their success." He takes a drink and swirls the rest of the contents in his glass. His mouth is set in a thin line. "That is, if I can tear myself away from Tokyo long enough."

"What do you mean?"

"We may have won Japan back from Britannia, but this is by no means a permanent victory. Recent events haven't changed the fact that seventy-five per cent of the world's Sakuradite is still _here_." Lelouch's eyes are sharp, and they glitter in the firelight. "Mark my words. Britannia will formally declare war come the new year, and the more we resist the more ruthless her attacks will be."

Suzaku frowns, thinking of the prospect of war, right after the holidays. Is this really what Japan wants? "The Prime Minister approves of this?"

"He endorses it fully."

He thought so. "And what about Nunnally? Does she know who you are?"

"That was a price that had to be paid." Lelouch heaves a sigh, rubbing his temples with his free hand. "She has my best officers protecting her at all times. The Black Knights keep her safe." He smiles bitterly. "It's not nearly enough, but I fight these battles now so that one day in the future I will no longer have to. Then I can make up for lost time."

_When?_ "But you've doomed Japan to a never-ending war!"

"Yes, well, it's better that than an artificial peace at the hands of oppressors." Lelouch finally sets down his empty glass on the table. He places his elbows on the armrests and steeples his fingers before his face. "At least now, the Japanese people can claim they are truly free."

Suzaku looks at him, long and hard. He replays the words that have just been said and imagines Zero there, his face a blank mask and his arm outstretched to a cheering crowd. Behind him: what's left of the Black Knights and his country; the image sticks and refuses to go away.

"You love Japan that much?"

Lelouch scoffs. "Hardly. Her people showed _no_ kindness to me, or Nunnally, in our youth. Perhaps to that extent, all human beings are cut from the same cloth." He pauses, bringing his hands to his chin, obscuring his lips with his fingers. "But I loathe Britannia even more. So maybe that's something."

Little by little, the cider disappears. But they don't actually speak of much after that, not even of Kallen, or Euphemia. Suzaku spends most of the time alternately studying Lelouch and trying to pretend he doesn't know why C.C. showed him this. He's just about given up when they both decide to call it a night, and Lelouch shows him the door.

"This might seem somewhat left-field, would you like to come over for dinner someday? Nunnally seems to enjoy your company, and Miss Sayoko is an excellent cook."

"Thanks, but I can't. I have to go…somewhere." Suzaku stares at his feet as he stands at the doorway, only shifting his eyes up when he notices that Lelouch is peering at _him_, intently. "What?"

"Nothing." He smiles. "You know, the Lady Kaguya has eyes very much like yours. You wouldn't happen to be related to her, would you?"

"I don't think so."

"Hmmm. For a moment there, I could have sworn…" Lelouch scrutinizes his face for a long, uncomfortable while, before shaking his head. "Never mind. I'm probably not going to see you again, am I?"

Suzaku shrugs, not trusting himself to speak.

"Pity. I can't quite explain it, but somehow I feel as though, had we met in less ill-fated circumstances, you and I might have been friends."

Try as he might, he can't come up with a reply to that, even as Lelouch is already about to close the door.

"Goodbye, Suzaku. And thank you, once again."

He walks down the familiar path to the main gate with too many thoughts competing in his head for him to focus on any one. Outside, however, the concrete enclosing Ashford becomes the border to paradise; the streets of Tokyo are filthy, ruined by too many bombs and machine-gunfire creating blackened craters on the pavement. The University across the street, where his quarters would have been, was levelled into a pile of rubble and warped steel, and he sees no sign of the Lancelot. Torn fliers proclaim the glory of the house of Kururugi, of Japan, of _Zero_.

More than once he sees shadows moving along graffiti-stained walls; breaking bottles and errant gunfire strain his ears. He feels a sudden presence behind him, a swift hand trying to pick his pocket, but when he whirls around and catches the offending arm he finds himself face-to-face with a small child, trying defiantly not to show fear.

No wonder Lelouch didn't want Nunnally leaving Ashford.

Suzaku walks until he can't anymore, and when he finally stops he finds himself at the threshold of a church – or rather, the wreckage of it left behind. This battle of Tokyo must have been a truly violent one, he muses as he sits in one of the pews and looks up. Through the broken stained-glass windows, the sky is a murky red, thick with smoke. He bows his head, but he doesn't pray; he just waits for C.C. to find him.

* * *

He imagines he hears a voice whispering in the back of his mind: Nunnally's voice, calling his name. And then it's Lelouch, a low murmur cycling through various instances of the same thing: "_It's too bad_," or "_what a shame_." And then the voices overlap, but he can still hear Euphy's, with something cold and light gliding across his cheek ("_Goodbye! Goodbye!_") before the voices become hundreds, thousands. He loses count at this point, because there are too many of them, and they merge into an unintelligible din in his head, chaos and murmuring and tongues of all kinds.

And then: silence.

* * *

It takes too long to register the hand resting idly on his hair, or the fact that he is lying down. He blinks and sees yellow sky, wisps of things that look like clouds but probably aren't. Then he sees C.C., peering down at him with her inexpressive eyes, tendrils of her hair framing her face and touching his.

He had his head on her lap the entire time, which is a graceless position that he quickly rectifies.

"C.C." The hoarseness of his voice surprises him, and he looks around. He isn't sure there's a ground beneath them at all, as everything is permeated by a strange, hazy mist. "Where are we?"

"Who knows." She stretches out her legs, grateful for the relief. "Tokyo, Pendragon, it doesn't matter anymore."

That isn't a very helpful at all. Suzaku rubs his eyes; this infinite plain stretches for as far as he can see, but there's something mildly familiar about it. "Is this the World of C?"

"It was. God knows what it's called now. They didn't exactly spell it out."

"Where is Lelouch?"

"Nowhere. Everywhere."

He glares at her. "You're not making any sense!"

"No?" C.C. looks at him intently, and what's even stranger is that there's not even a trace of mirth in her features. "Try harder."

He ignores her and climbs to his feet, willing away the vertigo. But then he looks around and sees, again, that there is nowhere to go. "Well how do we get out?"

"We don't. Not now, not tomorrow, not in a million years." C.C. hugs her knees, tilting her head back as far as she can. "That's right, an eternity of _this_. I suppose I could use the company, though."

Something in her words stirs a memory. He looks more closely at the mist and there, he finds he can barely make out something massive, red, looming in the distance. The realization leaves his lips in a whisper: (_Nowhere. Everywhere. Eternity._) "Ragnarok."

"Congratulations." She smiles. "You finally figured it out."

Suzaku looks around at the empty expanse, trying desperately to dredge up recollections of an event he never thought he would have to revisit until today. While a lot of the words that were thrown around that strange day had flown over his head, he understood the crux of it: Charles and Marianne wanted a world where everyone would be 'united,' so that all people, living and dead, could be of one mind. "Why are we still here, then?"

"You and I are anomalies. We don't belong in this perfect, unified human consciousness." She tips her head, hair spilling over her shoulders. "Or, to prove a point. That might be it."

"So everyone is…?" He trails off, whirls around and paces, turns, paces again in this endless plain of _nothing_. He takes a deep breath and calls: "Euphy?"

It isn't her voice that answers, or even one voice: _millions_, they must be, a wordless, toneless affirmation that grows in waves until it hits a crescendo and he has to clap his hands over his ears. This continues for entirely too long, and when it finally stops he pulls his hands back hesitantly. For a moment, he's not sure he _hasn't_ gone deaf.

"Saw that coming." C.C. looks more amused than sympathetic. "I probably ought to have warned you though. Sorry about that."

"I don't get it." He can still hear some whispers, lingering, but he doesn't know what they're saying. "I wasn't the one who stopped Ragnarok, it was – "

"Lelouch, yes." C.C. has stood up as well, and is now walking his way. "But who was it who chased him relentlessly to the ends of the earth, took away everything he had until he was left with nothing else to lose? He was willing to spend an eternity with his father, was he not? To torment him, make him suffer as much as he had. If his rebellion succeeded, if he _hadn't _been betrayed by the Black Knights and tricked into believing Nunnally was dead, do you think he would have even considered putting himself in that position?"

"So you're saying if I …" His throat tightens. "If I hadn't gotten in Lelouch's way, all those times, _this_ would have happened?"

"If you hadn't hurt him." C.C. nods. "If you hadn't pushed him to that kind of desperation." She looks at him closely, probably senses that he doesn't believe her (because he _doesn't_) and sighs. "Charles and Marianne had made up their minds about Ragnarok. And it's true, Lelouch was the only one who could put a stop to it. But you gave him a motive." She folds her arms across her chest. "You put him in the right place, at the right time."

Suzaku shakes his head, trying to drown out those voices through sheer will if only so that he can _think_. He remembers the thought of murder clouding his judgment as he followed Zero to that wretched island, the way he sold him to Charles, how he hunted him down relentlessly in the year that followed, stealing Nunnally away from the get-go. And then there was the confrontation at the shrine… "It wasn't just me, though," he argues, half-heartedly. "Prince Schneizel, the Black Knights, everyone – "

"Yes, of course. I didn't mean you per se, _gods_." She rolls her eyes with a huff. "The point is, at the end of the day you were a necessary part of the machine to prevent Ragnarok. As was Lelouch, but he figured that out on his own. You, on the other hand, needed a little help."

"Then what was the point of everything else?" His eyes flash, but it isn't anger that wins right now, no. "Everything I saw before that?"

"To show you that, hard as it may be for you to believe, you _did_ do some good in your life." C.C. walks slowly and stops in front of him, looking straight into his eyes. "The problem with you is that you never remember the people you helped, the people you saved. You dwell too much on all the wrongs you've done. Or, for that matter, the tragedies you _couldn't_ prevent."

Suzaku clenches his hands, avoiding her gaze. His mind is filled once again with visions of war and bloodshed, the casualty count from the FLEIJA fired over Tokyo's airspace. Nunnally putting on a brave face as something ominous swung above her, Euphy who died before him – twice. "I still don't see how this justifies everything we did," he says weakly.

"It doesn't," she agrees. "Not by a long shot. But again, think about how many people, _billions _of people, weren't reduced to _this_," and here she gestures to their eerie, soulless new world, "because of you. You gave them a future." She drops her arms and joins him in nailing her gaze to the mist, swirling at their feet. "Lelouch made peace with that long ago," she adds quietly. "Can you?"

He regards his surroundings again: nothing has changed, still, and 'forever' is becoming increasingly difficult to fathom now, when this is all there is. He wonders: how long ago did Charles and Marianne's plan take effect? Until that time, people were living with their own perceptions and principles, memories and dreams. And then – not anymore.

"You're telling me a traitor and murderer ended up saving the world," he murmurs, almost inaudibly, "by accident."

"Or by design. You decide."

Neither of them speaks for a very long time.

It's hard to decide _what _to believe, in light of all this: the notion that he was part of either a very improbable accident, or some orchestrated web of events that turned out for the better. Still, there's a truth in C.C.'s words that can't be denied no matter which path he takes. And it's _this_ that drives the point home to begin with anyway.

"You're right," he says, bowing his head to watch the mist – all that's left of everyone he ever knew, and countless others that he didn't. "I don't…there are still so many things I wish I hadn't done. Those people I killed, everything I've destroyed – I'll have to live with that, every day. But…" He clenches his fists, hard, so that his nails dig into the palms of his hands…and then, he lets go. "We knew from the very beginning: nobody would have wanted this. Nobody _deserves_ this. And that's why…"

"That's why…" This is all she picks up after he trails off, but when their eyes meet she breaks into a slow, fond smile. They don't need to finish that sentence anymore, and she looks, oddly, as though she's actually proud of him. "I think it's finally time for you to leave."

"How?"

"Oh, come on now." C.C. laughs. "That would be too easy."

He still doesn't get it for some time, and he just stares at her. The silence stretches on until a meaningful tilt of her head and a quirk of her upper lip reminds him of that utterly _strange_ rule she'd set, and he shakes his head with a sigh.

"For what it's worth…" He pauses, realizes he doesn't know how to finish that thought, and just gives up.

She lets him start it this time, a hesitant press of lips and welcome darkness – trust, after all, is what this relies on – and the last voices die away completely.

* * *

When she breaks the kiss, C.C. peers at him with a strange, bemused smile. She has one hand on his arm and another bracing his shoulder, as well, because he comes dangerously close to losing his balance on the ledge. "Careful."

Suzaku looks out the window as she steps away. The sky _still_ hasn't changed color outside, and the scenery down below is unperturbed. Time stopped, apparently, when the dream began…if that is even the right thing to call it, he realizes with a frown. He's certainly never had a dream this vivid before.

And he can't imagine a dream lingering this much, as though it burrowed deep into his head and promised to remain there, servile to memory, forever.

"C.C." He turns to her and suddenly feels self-conscious, sliding his eyes away. Perhaps after today, they'll never speak of this _ever again_, but... "Um, thanks. For…for, you know – "

"You're stuttering." She twirls around and stands with her back to the wall, looking at her hands. "But that's fine. I'll call it even if you fetch us some drinks. Must have _something_ downstairs to salvage this celebration."

Fair enough.

He isn`t sure how to explain it, but there's a strange restlessness running through his veins. All of a sudden, he wants to leave this room, wants to do _something_. "I'm calling Nunnally," he announces then, sliding off the ledge.

"Oh?" She lifts her head when his feet hit the floor. "What are you going to tell her?"

"I don't know. 'Merry Christmas,' maybe, to start." He cracks a smile, and it comes more easily now – not by a lot, but perhaps this is encouraging. "That goes to you, too."

He doesn't turn to look at her expression as he makes his way to the door. He feels lighter than anything in recent memory, and imagines that Lelouch, of course, would scoff at him for finding solace in something so _simple_. But it's always been like that; he's always been one to catch up.

And everything he learned today was its own reward: that his life, pitiful as it's been so far – too much sorrow, too much betrayal, far too many sins to pay for with several lifetimes' worth of repentance – served a purpose, and perhaps still does. What that is, if it exists, he'll have to figure out on his own, but this is better than nothing.

Definitely, a whole lot better than nothing.

Bidding C.C. a temporary farewell, Suzaku strides purposefully into the hallway. He hopes it's not too late to make it up to his Empress, this Christmas.

* * *

(What he doesn't see: C.C., throwing herself onto the bed the moment the door clicks shut, staring intensely at the ceiling.

She swings one leg onto the mattress and crosses the other one over it, swinging her foot idly. "Well I showed it to him," she murmurs into the empty room. "Of course it wasn't easy. But, he got it eventually. I do believe he's going to be fine, so stop worrying already." There is a brief pause, before she slowly breaks into a wry smile. "You're welcome."

With that, she finally leans over and opens the box on the bed. By now the grease has seeped through the cardboard, and the slice of pepperoni she brings to her lips is barely warm. But this should be more than enough, she decides, to take away the taste of cider.)

**.: fin :.**

* * *

More Author's Notes:

- [detail]: Suzaku's official birthdate is listed as July 10, 2000 a.t.b.

- [detail]: Although clementines are called Christmas oranges, the name only really stuck because the California variety is generally available in late fall / early winter. Every Christmas season there'd be a bowl full of them in practically all houses we visited – something about round fruits being 'lucky' – but I never found out if that was a universal thing, or a custom unique to our culture. (Three guesses as to where I'm from!)

- So, funny thing: I have no idea what the show's creators had in mind when they brought in the whole Ragnarok Connection angle. There's only so much that little family reunion (sans Nunnally) in R2 gave us: that they wanted to 'kill the gods' in order to bring about a unified human consciousness, including everyone who ever existed – past and present. Of course, the plan doesn't work, so after that point is where I started adlibbing. If there are actually side materials out there that go into more detail on this, then any inconsistencies with what shows up in this fic are entirely due to me not having seen them, and I apologize if that's so.

- I honestly don't know what it is with me and writing time-warp fics for Christmas. Nevertheless, what I said last year still holds: whatever your first interpretation was (of the events, of the implications, of what-caused-what and what-_prevented_-what), assume it to be correct.

So…yeah. Again, I'm sorry this is late; I had illusions this would be up on Christmas Eve, but a nasty week-long bout with the flu after school ended put a damper on that. Regardless, thanks a lot for reading, especially since it's really long. I also hope, at the end of it all, that the story made sense. And that, although it's not exactly a very happy / uplifting story, it was at least a satisfying read.

Happy holidays, everyone! Reviews would be loved, as always.


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